The Karma of Vocation

Schmidt Number: S-3303

On-line since: 15th September, 2012

X

When
we seek the answer to the question to which we referred in the
last lecture as to how human beings may establish a
relationship with the Christ today, the objection is made by
many that a number of human beings already have a relationship
with Him. I have spoken frequently about this objection, and we
know that it is invalid. On more careful consideration, it
turns out to be a thoroughly egoistic objection that can be
made only by a person who has the following view: “I have a
faith that makes me happy; anything else is no concern of
mine.” But in general, humanity's relation to the Christ-Being
is not satisfactory; that is easily recognizable from the
events of our times and little needs to be added. The necessary
answer to this objection can be given by everyone by saying
that a basic element in the confession of Christ must be the
truth that He died and rose for all men — for all men alike —
and that, when man turns against man for the sake of external
possessions, it can never be done in His name. It is possible
for a person to turn away from this general human destiny to
apply himself solely in egoistic fashion to his own creed.
Certainly, but then no attenion is paid to the fact that the
occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha is something that
primarily concerns human society. We will now have to mention
something that may draw our attention to what is essential in
the path that leads to Christ, since it is obvious that each
soul must find the way to Him for himself with those means that
are suitable for the present time.

When
we seek to understand in a more profound sense what the Christ
Being signifies for the earth, we must first acquaint ourselves
with the truth of an essential element in the Mystery of
Golgotha; that is, it actually occurred only once at a definite
point in space and time. When we fix this in our minds, we
shall discover a contradiction of a view that is generally
held, even by us; we should not simply seek to remove it by
argumentation since it is justifiable and must first be
recognized if we desire to remove it for our own souls. You
see, provided the Mystery of Golgotha is an inner and genuine
truth, it cannot represent anything but the meaning of the
evolution of the earth. But, as we know, everything that occurs
in time and space belongs to the realm of maya, the great
illusion; that is, it does not belong to the real and eternal,
the essential nature of things. Thus we face the highly
significant contradiction that the Mystery of Golgotha belongs
to maya, the great illusion, and we must place this
contradiction before our souls in its full validity.

Now,
since this Mystery of Golgotha occurred during the time of the
earthly evolution of humanity, let us first consider this
evolution. We know, of course, that what we have to deal with
is that the human being has come over from earlier worlds and
that at a definite point of time, as we have set forth in my book,
An Outline of Occult Science,
he was subjected to
what may be called a luciferic temptation, a seduction. We have
often considered this luciferic seduction in the sense in which
spiritual scientific investigation shows it, and we know it was
expressed in a magnificent image at the beginning of the Old
Testament. In the so-called “Fall of Man,” the image of Lucifer
as a serpent in Paradise is one of the mightiest
representations of religious documents.

When
we survey the time through which humanity passed from the
luciferic temptation to the Mystery of Golgotha, we find it to
be a time in which human beings gradually descended from a
primeval, atavistic clairvoyant, revelation that was brought
over from earlier planetary stages in which the spiritual
worlds had a real existence before their souls. During the
centuries preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, they
were no longer able to look up to the spiritual world as they
had done before, but they now possessed only echoes of the
ancient knowledge of the spiritual world.

Taking
now a relatively short period of earthly time since we cannot
go all the way back to the luciferic temptation, let us review
the successive descending stages of human evolution down to the
Mystery of Golgotha. If we go back far enough, we discover that
what men possessed at an earlier time as an atavistic wisdom,
as a real perception of the spiritual world, now echoed in the
world conceptions of the religions as reverence for a more or
less significant, but highly regarded, ancestor. That is to
say, in various regions of the earth we find religious cults
that we may call ancestral cults. Such cults in which men look
up with reverence to an ancestor still survive among those who
have remained at a more or less early stage of evolution. What
is the reason for this adoration? What is the reality behind
this looking up to an ancestor in ancient times? In those most
ancient times to which history can still look back, in that
hoary antiquity, we have a certain epoch in which ancestral
cults are customary (cf. chart on p. 194).

Such
ancestral cults were not based on fact, as is supposed by
superficial contemporary science, that those belonging to them
imagined they had to look up to a certain ancestor, but the
nature of the most ancient ancestral cults was such that men
had a direct vision of their ancestors at a certain time in
their lives. At these times, in a state of consciousness
between waking and sleeping such as was universal in the
earlier stages of human evolution, a person who looked up to an
ancestral god really attained a condition of union with what he
reverenced as his ancestor. The ancestor appeared to him not
merely in a dream, but in a dream-like image that signified
something real to him, and those individuals to whom the same
ancestor appeared belonged together in a single ancestral cult.
What these individuals beheld in spirit was, to be sure, a
human form elevated to a lofty level, but something entirely
different was concealed behind it. If we wish to know what was
really concealed behind this spirit form, we must realize that
the ancestor had once died and had left the earth as a highly
regarded personality who had wrought much good for a human
community. He had passed through the portal of death and when
these individuals looked up to him, he was on the way between
death and a new birth. As these human beings looked up to him,
what was it they saw of him?

We
know, of course, that when a human being passes through the
portal of death, he remains for a short time in his etheric
body before it is cast off. But the casting off of this body
signifies that it passes over into the spiritual worlds, into
the etheric world. The human being continues to develop in his
ego and his astral body; the etheric body passes over into the
etheric world. Since this man had performed something lasting
on earth, the memory of his etheric body continued for a long
time. It is this etheric body of the ancestor that was beheld
in the ancient atavistic, dream-like clairvoyance and people
revered what was revealed to them through it. But during the
period between death and a new birth, this etheric body comes
into contact with the spirits of the higher hierarchies; most
particularly with those belonging to the hierarchy of the
archai, the spirits of time. Since this particular ancestor was
a significant personality for human evolution, he thus
established a union with the time spirit who was bringing human
evolution one step forward.

What
made itself known through this ghost, as we may call it, of the
ancestor was, in reality, one of the time spirits; so worship
within the most ancient religions was really directed to the
time spirit. Wherever we go back into those times that we may
look upon as the hoary antiquity of history, we find that human
beings worshipped the etheric bodies of their forefathers to
cause the time spirits to reveal themselves. That is to say, as
we go back to the ancestral cults, what we find is the worship
of the time spirits, the archai.

Men
then descended further and began to worship those gods who are
known to us from the various mythologies, and whom we call
archangels; even Zeus in Greek mythology possessed archangelic
manifestations. In the most ancient times people looked up to
the time spirits; later, they looked up to those spirits who
are not time spirits but are of equal value with the spirits
who control the guidance of different peoples, the archangels.
Thus we may say that polytheism, when human beings worshipped
archangels, follows after ancestral worship.

Then
human beings descend still further to the period in which the
ego is gradually to be born in the individual. We now find that
the most advanced nations pass over to monotheism at a
relatively early period — the Egyptians, for example, even in
the second millennium before Christ, the people of the Near
East later. That is, they begin to worship angels, every person
his or her own angel, rather than an archangel. They descend
from the higher polytheism to the lower monotheism. After what
has previously been presented to you, you will not consider
what I am about to say as something strange. You will see that
people must cure themselves of the pride that permeates the
entire field of religious studies, which deems itself justified
to consider monotheism as a religion superior to polytheism. By
no means is it so, but the relationship of the two is just as
has been described.

Why,
then, could the ancient peoples still worship archai,
archangels, and angels? They could do so because they still
preserved a remnant or echo of the atavistic clairvoyant
capacity. For this reason they were able to lift themselves up
to what is superhuman; they could, in a certain sense, rise
above the human and elevate themselves to the superhuman. In
the ancient mysteries, this process of elevating oneself to the
superhuman was especially cultivated. Human beings were
developed so they could unfold within themselves what extended
beyond the human, whereby the human soul lifted itself into the
realm of spirituality. But then came the time when the human
ego, as it lives here between birth and death, was born for
human beings. This was the period coinciding with the
occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. If the Mystery of
Golgotha had not occurred, people would have degenerated; they
would have descended from worshipping angels to worshipping the
next subordinate hierarchy, man himself. When we recall how the
Roman Caesars had themselves worshipped as gods, how they
really were “gods” to the people, we shall know that at the
time of the Mystery of Golgotha human beings had degenerated so
far that they now no longer prayed to archai, archangels, or
angels, but to man. In order to save men from praying to earthly
human beings, it was necessary for the Divine Man to appear.

The
entrance of the Divine Man into history signified an important
new way to relate oneself to religious life. Where had the
worship of angels, archangels, archai, and even that of man in
the form of the Roman Caesars, been found? In man himself; no
one worshipped the Caesars through the Caesars, but through the
worshipper himself, obviously; this had arisen from man; it
came from the human soul. It was necessary that the Christ
should appear as historic fact in the evolution of humanity; it
was necessary that He should be seen, like the phenomena of
nature, from without. He had to come into touch with human
beings in an entirely different way from that of the gods of
the ancient religions — in an entirely different way. “Where
two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst
of them.” This is an important principle in Christianity
because it signifies that, whereas it is possible through mere
individual mysticism to find angels, archangels, even archai,
it is not possible by this individual mysticism to find the
Christ. Those who wish to practice individual mysticism, as
this is often described even among theosophists, generally
reach only the individual angel. They simply internalize this
angel more, even making him often somewhat more egoistic than
other persons make their gods. The Christ is found in different
ways, not through the mere development of one's inner being,
but when we are most of all aware that the Christ belongs to
the community of human beings, to the whole of human
community.

We now
come to a most important differentiation, which can be taken
into the human mind, we must admit, only with great difficulty.
It is imperative, however, that we force ourselves to its
level. When we face another human being in life, it is in maya
that we, as human beings, face each other. Just as we have
before us only the maya of natural phenomena, so are we
likewise confronted only with the maya of the other human
being. It is within maya that this human being stands before
our external senses and all that is connected with the external
world of the senses; then he stands before us as belonging to
his family, his nation, his time. If we should survey him
completely, we should see behind him the angel, the archangel,
the archai, but they all express themselves in what the person
is. It is because the archangel and the archai stand behind the
observer and the human being observed, the latter is in a sense
a member of certain human groups. In other words, the observed
person in this way stands within heredity and hereditary
relationships. Only our shortness of vision — understandable
because we are human — prevents us from consciously judging a
human being before us according to these essential connections;
unconsciously we always do this. Unconsciously we face one
another within this differentiation, which must inevitably be
brought into humanity by these three hierarchies. But the
Christ demands something more, something different. He demands
in reality that when you face someone, you shall feel that what
such a human being appears to you to be in the external world
is not the entire and complete human being. When you face a
human being, you should perceive his or her real being as
coming not only from archai, archangels and angels, but from
higher spirits no longer belonging to the earthly or even
planetary evolution because this begins with the archai, the
higher heavenly spirits, as you know from
An Outline of Occult Science.
You must see that with the human being something enters into
maya that is supramundane.

To
understand fully what I have just expressed, you must not allow
it to remain a mere concept but carry it over completely into
your feelings. It is necessary to understand clearly that in
every human being something supramundane in his nature comes to
meet us, something not to be understood by earthly human means.
Then everyone will experience that sensitive reverence in the
presence of all that is human. Before the Mystery of Golgotha,
man had gradually lost this superhuman element and had
descended all the way to being human. The superhuman element
had been lost because — listen carefully — when a human being
such as a Roman Caesar comes to be worshipped as a god, he
loses his humanity and sinks to the level of the subhuman. He
ceases to be a human being if he permits himself to be
worshipped as something superhuman in social life. Man was
threatened, therefore, with the loss of his humanity and it was
restored to him through the appearance of Christ on earth. Read
the cycle of lectures,
From Jesus to Christ,
(Note 118)
in which I spoke on this question, telling you that something is
really imparted to every individual human being through the fact
that Christ was on earth.

Thus,
the coming of the Christ has brought it about that we recognize
in every earthly human being, even if he is a sinner or a
publican, the Christ who is behind him. The Christ sat down
with sinners so that we shall recognize in every earthly human
being the truth of the statement, “What thou dost to the least
of My brethren, thou has done unto Me.”
(Note 119)
As I have said, this concept must be transferred entirely into our
feeling nature; only then shall we attain to its full truth.
Then one also sees all concepts and ideas that separate men
from one another fall away, and something belonging to all men
in common spreads as an aura over the entire earth when we vow
that we shall carry our search, not merely to the archai, but
upward to what stands above them whenever we are in the
presence of a human being.

If we
look back again to the ancient mysteries, we find that in them
the human being endeavored to transcend his own being in order
to have his soul coalesce with the spiritual world. But through
the occurrence of the luciferic temptation this is only
partially possible. In this ascent the possibility is lost to
ascend still further. It is not possible to bear anything more
up into the higher world. Why is this so? The answer to this
question will come to us if we fix our attention on the
profounder meaning of the luciferic temptation. What does
Lucifer truly purpose for humanity? We have often emphasized
this. Humanity lives in maya, something that is not the real
world but only a mirror of it. What, then, is Lucifer's
intention? In this mirror the human being can lift himself up a
few stages as far as to the archai, but he must then be taken
over by Lucifer if he desires to rise still higher into the
spiritual. In a certain sense, he must then take Lucifer as his
guide; Lucifer, who constitutes the light that guides him
further. If the luciferic evolution had continued, if Christ
had not entered into human evolution, the following would have
come about after the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha
ought to have taken place: human beings within the mysteries
would have developed to such an extent that the archai would
have been openly visible to them. Then they would have entered
into the luciferic world. In that case, however, all that the
higher gods such as the exusiai implanted into earthly
evolution in the form of the human element would have remained
on earth. Man would have spiritualized himself in an entirely
ascetic way and would have entered into the spiritual luciferic
world in this ascetic spiritualization, leaving behind the
corporeal. Human souls would have found their salvation, but
the earth would have remained purposeless. The bodies of human
beings would never have been able to render the service to the
souls that they really ought to render. To prevent this
constitutes the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We
must now look back once more to the evolution before the
Mystery of Golgotha if we wish to understand this matter
completely. From the very beginning of the evolution of the
earth, it was Lucifer's intention to lead men away from the
earth into his spiritual kingdom. He had no interest in the
rest of earthly evolution but wanted only to possess what the
higher gods had initiated in connection with man. He wished to
lead this away in the form of the soul from the earthly
evolution after it had remained for a time in the earthly form
that comes from the exusiai, the spirits of form. In other
words, he wished to lead the souls away and leave the earth to
its fate. Why is it, then, that human beings did not follow
this endeavor of Lucifer, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to
lead them into a luminous world? Why didn't they? You may
understand the reasons from many suggestions I have given here,
even in these very lectures. They did not follow Lucifer
because something was introduced into the evolution of the
earth by the higher gods that prevented them from becoming
light enough to do so.

As I
have shown you, what is called the eighth sphere was introduced
into earthly evolution in ancient times. As one of its aspects,
the eighth sphere consists of man's acquiring such a preference
for and attachment to his lower nature that Lucifer is not able
to remove the higher nature from it. Every time Lucifer
endeavored to spiritualize human beings, they were too strongly
habituated to the flesh to follow him. If they had not been
possessed by this cleaving to the flesh, to the physical
nature, they would have followed Lucifer. This is one of the
great mysteries of cosmic existence, that a divine element was
actually implanted in human nature so that it might have, as it
were, a greater heaviness than it would have possessed if this
divine and necessary element had not been implanted in it. If
it had not been implanted, human souls would have obeyed
Lucifer. When we go back into ancient times, we find everywhere
that the religions lay emphasis on the necessity of human
beings reverencing what is earthly, what is an earthly
connection living in flesh and blood so that they may be heavy
enough not to be led out into the universe. Since all things
having a relationship to both the human and the cosmic require
not only an earthly, but also a cosmic arrangement, what you
find described in my
Occult Science
occurred. At a certain time, as you know, not only was the earth
formed, revolving in its orbit around the sun, but it was provided
with the moon as its satellite.

What
does it mean that the earth has a moon as its satellite? It
means nothing more than that it acquired a force through which
it can attract and hold the moon nearby. Should the earth not
possess this power to hold the moon, then the spiritual
correlative of this force would not be able to chain man to his
lower nature because this force, from the spiritual point of
view, is the same as that with which the earth attracts the
moon. It may be said, then, that the moon is placed in the
universe as an opponent of Lucifer in order to hinder him. I
have already alluded to this mystery
(Note 120)
and pointed out that in the period of materialism of the nineteenth
century, this truth has been exactly reversed in Sinnet's book,
Esoteric Buddhism.
(Note 121)
There the moon is
described as something actually hostile to man. The truth is
that it is not hostile to him but prevents him from falling
victim to the temptation of Lucifer; it acts as the cosmic
correlative of what constitutes the attachment of the human
being to his lower nature. Rather than tearing the souls out of
the lower nature and thereby preventing its concomitant
spiritualization, a subconscious process was required. Had the
arrangement been conscious, man would have followed the urges
of his lower nature in full consciousness and would have sunk
to the animal level. There had to be something in the lower
nature of which man was not conscious and which he did not
follow except as a human being on earth would follow what
flowed into his lower nature as a divine element. Especially
the God of the Old Testament, the Jahve God, was concerned that
the human being should remain on earth. Jahve is connected in this
mysterious way with the moon, as you will find explained also in
Occult Science.
From this statement you can
estimate how materialistic it was to designate the moon as the
eighth sphere, whereas it really is the force itself, the
sphere, that attracts the moon. In her misguided ways,
Blavatsky developed special malice in her Secret Doctrine by
maligning the Jahve God as a mere moon god. She wanted to
replace him with Lucifer whom she undertook to represent as the
friend of the spirit. To be sure, Lucifer is just that, but
only in the particular sense I have explained. Blavatsky tried
to represent the Jahve God as the god of the mere lower nature,
whereas what really constituted an opposition to Lucifer was
implanted in the lower nature.

You
see how dangerous it is to set up truths that may be perverted
to their opposite. Blavatsky was misled by certain beings who
had an interest in guiding her into putting Lucifer in the
place of Christ, and this was to be achieved by introducing
precisely the opposite of the truth of the eighth sphere and by
maligning the Jahve God, representing him merely as the god of
the lower nature. Thus did those cosmic powers who desired to
advance materialism work even through what was called
“theosophy.” Materialism would obviously have sunk to its worst
abyss if men had come to believe that the moon was really the
eighth sphere in the sense indicated by Sinnet or Blavatsky,
and that Christianity must be fought in every way.

Now,
placing the opponent of Lucifer in the lower nature of man was
only possible so long as the human being had not developed his
ego in the manner in which this took place at the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha. The degree to which this ego was subdued
in ancient times is greatly underestimated. It was subdued and
appeared only during the centuries just prior to the Mystery of
Golgotha. Then it no longer sufficed merely to place in the
subconscious, or unconscious, nature what strove against
Lucifer. Something had to come that the human being could take
up into his consciousness; this is the Christ, who follows the
Jahve God in evolution. It was necessary that the Christ should
come so that through an avowal of Him the human being might
consciously oppose mere spiritualization as this was striven
for on the part of Lucifer. Christ descended for all human
beings and only through our feeling related to everyone else do
we belong to the earth. The deeper understanding of the Christ
derives from our connection with all human beings and from our
effort to attain a full and complete connection with them.

You
see, as long as men lived without the fully developed ego
before the Mystery of Golgotha, they passed through the portal
of death into the spiritual world and entered into relationship
with archai, archangels and angels. But since they had not yet
developed the complete ego here on earth, even after they had
passed through the portal of death they did not need to develop
a connection with the higher spiritual beings consciously. This
was regulated through the atavistic powers that lay within
them. But since the Mystery of Golgotha — not by reason of it
but since that time — everything has become quite different.
Let us look at ourselves and see how things have changed.

A
human being passes through the portal of death as do others or
perhaps one person passes through the portal of death and
others remain here on earth. By virtue of his or her passing
through the portal of death, an individual continues to be a
human being and if we desire to keep our connection with such
an individual, our relationship to him or her cannot change.
Let us now bear in mind, however, that at the present time,
since we live after the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being in
ascending into the spiritual worlds passes through the
hierarchies of the angels, archangels, and archai. Since he is
now within the period in which his ego has developed here on
earth, he possesses a consciousness also for the other
hierarchies that are above them. That is to say, he develops
consciously the forces poured into him from beings that are
even higher than the archai. What does this signify? Let us
take a concrete case and assume that through death a person
loses one who is dearly beloved. The one who has passed through
the portal of death maintains for many years, of course, the
connection with certain inclinations and tendencies that he had
during his lifetime. However, since he developed his ego here
in his lifetime as a human being, something in him begins
consciously to work on the perspective of his next incarnation
immediately after he has passed through the portal of death.
This occurs in a decisive way in what I have called in the
Mystery Plays,
(Note 122)
the midnight of existence; it appears to some
extent in human consciousness immediately after death. When a
person is in this state, however, there lives in him what
already draws him away from what he was born into in his last
life. Let us suppose that in his last life he belonged to a
certain nation. The person who has remained behind continues to
belong to this nation in his physical body, but a force
belonging to an entirely different nation takes possession of
the one who has died. How can the bond between the two continue
beyond death undiminished in strength? Only when the one who
remains here has an understanding for what extends above the
angels, archangels and archai; that is, above what one may
develop here through one's inclination toward relationships to
human groups. If someone remains behind as a member of a
certain nation and loses a friend through death who is already
preparing to be a member of a different nation, the bond of
love with the dead person cannot remain undisturbed. Only
through the fact that both confess Christ, that they understand
Christ in what extends above all differentiations of men can
this bond be supramundane. What did John the Baptist say when
Christ Jesus came to him to be baptized? “Behold, the Lamb of
God, who beareth the sins of the world.” The full significance
of these words might make us grow pale were we to take it in
its full weight.

It may
be asked why Christ has been victorious and not Mithras. During
the time when Christianity was spreading from the East toward
the West, the Mithraic cult expanded along the Danube all the
way to France and Spain in Western Europe. The cult of Christ,
however, has been victorious over the Mithraic cult. Why?
Because the cult of Mithras had developed from extending above
angels, archangels, and archai, and through this upward
extention wished to attain to the Light-giver and Ruler of the
World. What is the Christ in contrast to this? The Christ is He
who took upon Himself for the evolution of the earth all that
is bound up with angels, archangels, and archai; that is, all
that chains man to the earth. He bears the sins of the world,
those sins that have come into the world through human
differentiation. He is a being in whose presence we must say,
“I belong to a single human community, but because I belong to
a single human community, to something connected with the
earthly, I separate myself from the divine. From this I can be
redeemed only by a Being who has nothing to do with human
differentiation. The Christ in me leads me beyond earthly
differentiations, teaches me to feel that what has been
produced by earthly differentiation is suffering, that it
brings death. Only through such an understanding of the Christ
in me do I find my connection with the spiritual world.” All
that entered humanity through the fact that differentiations
have come about has been removed from it through the entrance
of Christ into the world. Christ could not, therefore, be a
divinity like Mithras, who guides the human being beyond
himself. He is the one God who descended to earth and took away
the sins of differentiation and cleansed man of them. Mithras
rushes through the world with a sword in his hand that he
thrusts into the lower nature to slay it; under him the lower
nature dies. Christ offers Himself as the Lamb of God, who
takes the lower nature into Himself in order to redeem it.

Much
lies in this comparison, immeasurably much! It is for this
reason that the idea of Christ is not to be separated from the
idea of death and resurrection. Only when we realize that what
leads man to the earth brings him death, that there is more in
him than what brings him into the earthly atmosphere, and that
something is in him that is the Christ Who leads him away
again: In Christo morimur — only then do we understand
the Christ and know that we are united with Him. Thus, the
representations of the ancient gods could set triumphant beings
before us, but the Christ could only be presented by the
joining of human beings in suffering and death because Christ
endured all that enters into the differentiations of man
throughout the earth. It is thus that Christ becomes the One
Who leads man through death and back into the spiritual world,
but this also makes Him the Divinity Who may be approached here
on earth as we pass beyond maya or illusion. As the Christ is
born here from the womb of maya, so must we draw near to Him by
advancing beyond maya and appealing to Him in all the higher
reality that projects into maya, but isn't maya itself.

If it
is to turn to this worship of Christ, mankind will still need a
long time on earth. Nevertheless, we must begin again to take
Christianity earnestly. It is taken least of all seriously by
the theologians who are frequently in conflict over whether or
not Christ performed miracles and, for example, drove out
demons through them. Well, it is entirely superfluous to argue
over whether or not Christ drove out demons. It is more
important that we learn to reproduce His miracles and thereby
cast the demons out now where we can. We still have little
power to cast out demons in the higher sense as antiquity knew
how to do through its atavism. That is the destiny, the karma,
of our epoch. But we can begin to drive out those demons of
whom I spoke yesterday; they are there and it is negative
superstition to suppose that they are not. How do we drive them
out? Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out
when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is,
permeated with the Christ consciousness. In other words, this
means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man's
deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands
behind him everywhere. Thus, he ought to do nothing in the
world except that in which the Christ can help him. If he does
something else, the Christ must also help him but He is thus
crucified again and again in human deeds. The crucifixion is
not merely a single deed; it is a continuing deed. So long as
we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls
by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we
will continue to crucify Christ. It is from this point that our
education to a true Christianity must begin. What was
symbolically practiced in the ancient cults of Christianity and
was once performed only on the altar must take hold of the
entire world. Humanity must learn to deal with nature as the
gods have done; it should learn not to construct machines in an
indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring
sacramentalism into everything that is produced.

It is
already possible to make a beginning in many things. Most of
all, human beings can begin to develop sacramentalism in two
areas. The first is that of educating and teaching children. We
will begin to spiritualize what the religions call “baptism”
when we look upon every human being who enters the world
through birth as bringing his/her Christ forces with
him/herself. Thus we will have the right reverence before the
growing human being and can then direct the entire education
and especially the teaching of the child in this spirit so that
we bring in this teaching a sacramentalism to fruition. We can
achieve the same end when we not only look upon educating and
teaching the child as a divine service, but also make it
such a divine service. Finally, when we endeavor to bring what
we call our knowledge into our consciousness in such a way
that, as our souls are filled with ideas of the spiritual
world, we are aware that the Spiritual world is entering into
us and that we are being united with the spiritual; when we
look upon that as a “communion;” when we can realize true
knowledge in a sentence you find expressed before 1887:
“Thinking is the true communion of humanity,”
(Note 123)
when the symbolic sacrament of the altar will become the
universal sacramental experience of knowledge. It is in this
direction that the Christianizing of man must move forward. You
will then come to the knowledge that, everywhere in life,
reality enters into maya in everything that is related to the
Christ, and that to look upon reality after the manner of
modern science with its world conception is in the most eminent
sense unchristian.

It is
strange how people nowadays are so easily able to adjust to
what is unchristian and how little they can find their way to
everything in Christianity that is appropriate to our time. As
yet, we can see very little that counteracts materialism from,
as I might say, a darkling inclination. If there are some
beginnings, people embracing them proceed on false paths in
that they, in a confused way, turn to old relations rather than
to spiritual science.

Forgive me if I mention in this connection something that
concerns me personally, but I am doing this only to cite an
example. I may already have pointed out in these lectures that
Hermann Bahr,
(Note 124)
a contemporary personality whom I
knew very well in my youth, is again in the process of seeking
spiritual things. He is not seeking them in spiritual science
because his interest for it is very limited. Take his very fine
and intelligent book on expressionism and you will discover
that he has only a marginal interest in spiritual science. But
you can also see from the book itself that up to its
publication he has informed himself about spiritual science
only to the extent of his having read Levy's book
(Note 125)
on my world view and on the people who oppose it. He has not
found the way yet to really engage himself more deeply.
However, it is interesting that he wrote a novel whose hero
becomes acquainted with everything: contemporary chemical
laboratories and so on, attending Oswald's
(Note 126)
lectures in Leipzig, busying himself a bit with the theosophers
in London, and so forth. His hero becomes exposed to everything
which the present day offers in spiritual sensations, and he
even dabbles in spiritism. And then he asks someone — I don't
remember who it was — to give him esoteric exercises, which he
practices for a while. But he is impatient, continues them only
for a short time, does not achieve results and then abandons
them; in fact, he gives up on all his endeavors after a short
while. Then he has some strange experiences — the most
interesting thing for me has been that, in a curious way, much
in this book is reminiscent of what I have mentioned most
recently in lectures, even about actual events, although I
haven't seen Hermann Bahr for the past twenty-eight years
except once, but then we definitely did not discuss questions
related to our views of the world. Recently, Hermann Bahr also
had a play of his staged which is entitled
The Voice.
One need not defend this play for the simple reason that
Hermann Bahr just is not trying to find his way into spiritual
science, which he finds too difficult, but is relapsing into
orthodox, or let's say, more recent Catholicism. At any rate,
he is in search of spiritual life.

It is
interesting how the hero of this play is in search of spiritual
life. He is married to a lady, the daughter of a very orthodox
mother and herself very orthodox in view. This lady is deeply
serious about Christianity — more so than can be expected of a
human being. However, her husband, the hero of the play, is a
disciple of Oswald and Haeckel and is quite a materialist.
Since his wife and mother-in-law are serious Christians, they
are, of course, pained by the fact that the husband is a
disciple of Oswald and Haeckel
(Note 127)
and does not want
to hear anything about the spiritual world. The wife grieves so
much about this that she dies. After her death, the husband,
from an unknown dark feeling, frequently thinks his deceased
wife is calling out one thing or another to him. One day, in
the sleeping compartment of a train, he hears the voice of his
wife with special clarity. This almost makes him insane; when
the train stops at a station he rushes out and behaves like a
lunatic in what I believe was the waiting room of a station.
The train went on without him, and later, it was demolished in
a railroad accident. The injured people are carried into the
station and then he realizes that he had been saved by the
voice of his deceased wife; she had caused him to leave the
train in which he would have otherwise perished. This was the
first time that he associated the voice of his wife with the
conditions of reality. I do not want to condemn this; I simply
want to tell you what a contemporary human being commits to
paper these days. The hero of the play, by experiencing this
apparent miracle and the after-effect of this woman's being
beyond her death, realizes that he has been saved by her and
this causes him to reflect anew about the connection of human
beings with the spiritual world. Later, his wife continues to
communicate with him frequently and the ensuing intimate
friendship between his soul and the soul of his deceased wife
leads him back to Christianity in the truest sense, and he
overcomes his materialistic world view.

Even
though we do not need to defend this play as such, we see that
there are human beings nowadays who strive to instill the view
into life that a truth of the spiritual world can manifest
itself in maya, the great deception. Only a clear understanding
of Christianity will build the bridge between the life here on
earth and the life that exists in the spiritual world. Quite a
few people today have a need for this spiritual world but we
must admit that their number is insignificant in relation to
the large number of those people who are either mired in
traditional religions — and thus have fallen prey to
materialism even if they don't admit it — or whose lives are
directly determined by materialism and who do not have a real
connection with the spiritual world. As I said before, we need
not defend Bahr's play but it can nevertheless direct us to
this important realization: Whoever wants to understand
Christianity in its deepest meaning must get beyond the problem
of death. After all, the most interesting thing in this play is
that it takes as its point of departure the relation between
the human soul and the human body which transcends the portal
of death. To be sure, there is a basic error in all these
things: instead of being led to Christianity — for which
process spiritual science, as we understand it, wants to make a
real beginning — we are again led back to an individual
religious denomination.

If
human beings would only understand the Christ in the way I have
indicated today — and if we may still continue to speak here,
I will deal with this matter more thoroughly — if they could
so understand the Christ as the matter has been explained today
in only the most elementary suggestions, then the feeling and
conceptions that are developed in regard to Him could be
conveyed to all human beings. Christ did not die only for those
who belong to some Christian sect, but He died and rose again
for all mankind. We must not associate some specific religious
confession with the Being of Christ, but every religious
confession is to be brought into connection with Christianity.
If all people would come to understand how to conceive the
Christ as has been indicated, Christianity would spread over
the entire earth because the revelation of Christ and the
revelation of Jesus are two different things.

If we
go as missionaries to foreign cultures, or even to people in
our own lands, and wish to force upon them the worship of Jesus
within a religious denomination, we will not be understood
since the knowledge of these people extends far beyond what is
brought to them by this or that missionary. I should like to
know, for example, what a Turk would say if a modern Protestant
pastor should try to convey to him his conception of Christ.
This conception as it is dealt with by modern Protestant
pastors holds that there was once a Socrates, and then one who
was somewhat more than Socrates, the Christ, the human being,
the special human being, but still the human being — or any of
those confused things that are said today in modern
Protestantism about Christ. The Turk would say to him, “What!
You tell me such a thing and you wish to be called a Christian?
Just read the nineteenth chapter of the Koran;
(Note 128)
much more is contained in it about the Christ than what you are
telling me!” In other words, the Turks know a great deal more
concerning Christ Jesus than what the modern Protestant pastors
are prone to present because the Koran contains more about Him
and Christ is represented much more as the Divinity in the
Turkish confession than in that of the modern Protestant. This
is simply not realized because nowadays people do not often go
so far as really to read the original religious documents;
rather, they utter much superficial nonsense regarding all
possible religions.

The
Jesus revelation, too, will touch men in the proper way, but
they themselves must attain its truth by their own power. They
will be able to do this after having passed through a
sufficient number of incarnations. Everyone today is to some
degree prepared to receive the Christ revelation; this is a
distinction that must be made. However, many forces are at work
to suppress the real Christ revelation and genuine spiritual
science. In this regard you need only to remember some of the
things I previously mentioned regarding my characterization of
various endeavors which lay claim to being occult.

And
now I would like to conclude today's lecture, but not without
offering a short supplement which, for definite reasons that
will become apparent to you momentarily, should not be
considered as part of the lecture itself. What I have stated
thus far I have said without reservations whatsoever; but what
I am about to add I shall have to formulate, at least for the
time being, with certain qualifications. That is why I am
presenting these additional remarks separately. If I mention
them today, it is because I consider them somewhat important
within the framework of the considerations at hand.

I had
indicated earlier that materialism reached its zenith in the
middle of the 19th century. During that time, the people who
knew that spiritual life would always be necessary for humanity
considered teaching mankind that our environment really
contains spiritual beings and effects. But I had also indicated
that the leading occultists in those days branched off into two
groups. One of them maintained that mankind was not yet ready
to accept spiritual things, while the second one was saying in
the middle of the century that mankind was indeed ready to be
exposed in an elementary way to the most important concepts of
spiritual life.

This
second group, which advocates the teaching and the
dissemination of the doctrine, has been reduced to a tiny
number of people. However, the anthroposophical movement
subscribes to the belief that the dissemination of the
doctrine, as it is practiced by us in today's activities, is
important for the transmission of spiritual knowledge to
mankind. This question was first raised in the fourth decade of
the 19th century, but those who held this view were, in a way,
outvoted. After that had happened, they agreed to chart a new
course and adopt the practice of spiritism. These people
attempted to show that spiritualistic media — individuals who
can be considered psychics — are able to receive messages from
the spiritual world and that it would be possible by these
means to get in touch with the realms of the spirit.

I have
characterized these things before, and I also indicated that
this entire attempt was a failure. It was a failure because in
contrast to what I explained in my recent speech in Bern, the
people involved in the experiments were unable to pinpoint the
various stages of our connection with the dead. Yet, the people
in question did not want to deal with that phenomenon and,
thus, the entire attempt was unsuccessful. All of the psychics
indicated in the most primitive and elementary way that they
were in direct communication with the deceased persons, and
people always wanted to receive direct pronouncements from some
deceased person through these media. Please note, this is not
to say that what passes through a medium in an experiment
cannot in some way lead to a contact with a dead person. But it
is another matter to decide whether or not this is an
unconscious, a genuine, and a proper mediation, and whether the
mediation is possible at all. Some entirely different results
were expected from the experiments. The psychic media were
expected to make people understand that not only sensuous, but
also spiritual forces flow continuously into human beings.
Moreover, the experiments were supposed to teach people that
spiritual things were preferably to be sought in the immediate
environment, and not in the announcements of this or that dead
person.

Since
the whole attempt has proven to be a blunder, the serious
occultists withdrew from this spiritistic experiment, and
mankind now has to pay for this in that the psychic media have
been usurped by all kinds of occultists. The latter do not
pursue purely occult endeavors, but they chart a course that
serves some specific human purpose. I have often mentioned this
before: The person who wants to be a genuine occultist cannot
merely serve a specific human purpose; rather, he must serve
general human purposes, and above all, he or she must never
employ improper and incorrect means in order to reach any goals
whatsoever. But what isn't called occultism these days! You
could get a notion of this if you read the report of the last
Theosophical Convention, which contained the speeches of Mrs. Besant
(Note 129)
and Mr. Leadbeater.
(Note 130)
In these speeches, the present situation is depicted as the big
struggle between Lords of Light, on whose side Mrs. Besant and
Mr. Leadbeater are naturally to be found, and the Lords of
Darkness. In these speeches the opinion is expressed that any
neutral person not taking sides with any of these opposite
parties, or more properly, with Mrs. Besant's and Mr.
Leadbeater's Lords of Light, is a traitor. But still other
things were discussed in these meetings. Mr. Leadbeater, for
example, related from one of his profound occult insights that
Bismarck
(Note 131)
was supposed to have gone to France
before 1870 and established magnetic centers in the North,
South, East, and West of France. During the 1870/71 war, these
magnetic centers established by Bismarck had been at work,
according to Mr. Leadbeater, because otherwise the war with
France would have been lost. This is the kind of stuff people
listen to in theosophical meetings! Yes, they do listen to it,
and one can only marvel at this or do something more drastic
when one learns such things are mentioned. But as I said, there
are many kinds of occultism in our age.

Now
that serious occultists have withdrawn from spiritism, it is
important to keep in mind that the latter has been taken over
by people pursuing specific purposes. And it is quite easy to
do this. Please keep in mind what I want to say in this
supplement: Spiritism originated from an honest attempt to find
out whether mankind nowadays is ready to accept spiritual
truths. Also, remember that the attempt was a failure and that
all kinds of movements, occult brotherhoods, as well as
individuals — especially from America — have attempted to
manipulate the psychic media one by one for their own specific
purposes.

Following all this, I now want to speak about a report that our
dear friend, Mr. Heywood-Smith, gave to me yesterday concerning
the book that deals with the experiences of Sir Oliver Lodge.
(Note 132)
I repeat, I am relating this with every
possible reservation because I only have a report in front of
me; it, however, is revealing enough. I reserve the right to
make further comments when I am in possession of the book
itself. However, since I do not consider the matter
unimportant, I would like to deal with it today. Should the
report prove to be incorrect, I would, of course, clarify the
things mentioned today. That is why I speak with
reservations.

It is
an extraordinarily significant fact, isn't it, that one of the
most renowned scientific personalities of England, the great
naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge, has written a book
(Note 133)
containing things which, when accepted as he presents them,
should be counted among the most significant pronouncements of
the present time. We know, of course, that Sir Oliver professed
in some of his other books that he acknowledges the existence
of the spiritual world. But let me come to the facts:

Sir
Oliver Lodge had a son by the name of Raymond who was born in
1889 and who, when the war broke out, volunteered for military
service while Sir Oliver and his wife were in Australia. In
March 1915 Raymond came to a vicinity of Ypern — and you can
imagine how worried his parents were. Soon thereafter, Sir
Oliver received a message from an American medium, a Mrs.
Piper, which was dated August 15. This message from America had
a peculiar content which, according to the report that I have
in front of me, reads as follows: “Myers will take an interest
in whatever fate has ordained for you and will protect you.”
However, this message was couched in the classical form of a
poem by Horace. To repeat, Sir Oliver was notified by an
American medium in August that Myers, formerly chairman of the
Society for Psychical Research in London
(Note 134)
but deceased fourteen years prior to the date of the letter, would
protect and support Sir Oliver Lodge during a difficult event
of which he, Sir Oliver, would be a part and thus work toward
his protection. Please bear in mind that this message mentions
only that Myers would help Sir Oliver during a difficult
event.

Now,
when Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in action in September
1915, Sir Oliver at first related the message which had
indicated that Myers would help him, to the death of his son.
Subsequently, however, Sir Oliver's family was the subject of
all kinds of pronouncements by the psychic media; in fact,
several psychic media appeared on the scene simultaneously and
delivered quite a few messages. Little by little, it turned out
that all these messages had the following basic content: “Myers
is united with your son” — Sir Oliver's and Lady Lodge's son,
because seances were conducted with her as well. “Myers is
helping your son, whose primary concern is that you receive
word from him and, especially, that Sir Oliver should thereby
be placed into a relationship with the spiritual world.” — If
one reads the various pronouncements of the individual psychics
as presented in this report, one thing stands out everywhere.
Throughout, the pronouncements exhibit interesting examples of
psychic elevation; everything happens at a precise time;
questions are being asked and so on, and they are then answered
by the media. The whole process is extremely interesting. Even
a picture of Raymond Lodge that was unknown to his family is
found because the deceased son points to it and describes it,
and it is then found in exactly the same place that he
pinpointed. In short, in this book there seems to be compiled
with extraordinary precision and exactitude all that can be
experienced in many a spiritistic séance and which could
lead to the events narrated. It is known that Sir Oliver had
always been somewhat inclined toward these practices, much to
the displeasure of his sons. However, after these happenings
they became believers, too. Sir Oliver himself seems to have
described in the most detailed manner how this bridge to his
deceased son was constructed through the various psychic
media.

What
is important and what is presented is the fact that such a
highly respected personality is induced to transcend into the
spiritual world through the use of psychic media. I have to say
this: From what I know about the various séances, they
themselves do not reveal too many new features. — But
something else is very important. We have here a modern
scientific personality of the first rank who, when writing in
this fashion, can have a tremendous influence on the minds of
human beings and who feels compelled to write in this way. That
is very important because such writing influences many people
and causes them to turn to the “media enterprise,” which seeks
to relate itself with the spiritual world in this fashion.

We
are, of course, presented here with the same mistake of wanting
to attain access to the spiritual world through spiritism which
I previously described to you. But now let me ask you to look
at the matter more closely. In the first message by the medium
Piper which Sir Oliver Lodge received from America, a forecast
is made of only one event against which Myers would protect Sir
Oliver. To be sure, this event could have occurred in several
ways. Suppose the son hadn't been killed in action. In that
case, the statement that followed would have been quite
compatible with the content of the message: “Well, you have
been told that Myers protects your son in the spiritual world
and keeps him from dying on the battlefield.” — You will
probably not doubt that the people in America could have known
that Raymond Lodge had been stationed in an endangered zone of
the battlefield and that, therefore, one could have made
pronouncements similar to those of the old oracles: “Myers will
protect your son.” And had the son come out of the war
unscathed, one could have said after the fact: “Myers did
protect him by getting him out of the battle zone alive.”
Suppose, however, the son was killed in action, one could then
easily relate the prophecy to Myers' role as a mediator in
bringing father and son together from the spiritual world. Thus
we can see that the original pronouncement was shrewdly
phrased. The whole affair was contrived in America. Since such
fellowships extend, of course, over the whole world, the next
medium was then put in touch with Lady Lodge. It is not
necessary to know how such an anonymous session, as it is
called in the report, comes into being. The procedures are as
is customary in those sessions. But by now the sad news of the
son's death had been received and Lady Lodge's psyche harbors
all the after effects that such a message evokes. It is not
difficult to demonstrate that what dwells in one soul migrated
into another and communicates through the medium. Moreover, the
son survived beyond death in the soul of his mother, in the
manner that we are all acquainted with. Therefore, the
accomplishment of the medium was nothing more than a rendering
of what was already present in the souls of Lady Lodge or her
family. This can be nicely substantiated from the protocol of
the seances, which in each case is modulated to allow for the
character of the major participants in these sessions. The name
Myers is mentioned even by the media who were not acquainted
with him. That, however, is not all that miraculous because Sir
Oliver Lodge was a very good friend of Myers and had worked
with him and so on. In short, everything would have been fine
if only Sir Oliver, aside from the personal interest he took in
his son's fate, had been content with carrying out an
experiment whose sole purpose it was to show that there are
spiritual effects in our environment. This was the original
intention of the occultists, but then they abandoned this
path.

I do
not want to make judgments as I am sure the book itself will
explain this matter, too. However, it seems we are confronted
here with the obvious. Some people want to use Sir Oliver in
order to attain definite special purposes. By using the
constellations at hand, one very sorry occult brotherhood is
likely to cite our case as characteristic when it makes its
thrust to possibly, if you will, win over science to spiritism.
Spiritism always likes to be considered as being “scientific,”
and it can be easily used to attain special purposes.

To
mention just one example, the attempt had been made in another
place in America to cure mankind of the idea of reincarnation.
What took place? During the time when the events I
characterized had already happened, that is, when the serious
occultists had already left spiritism, a certain Langsdorff,
(Note 135)
if I am not mistaken, organized all
kinds of séances in several localities. When media were
put in touch with the dead, the latter everywhere gave
testimony that they were not at all waiting for reincarnation.
And so the doctrine of repeated lives on earth was especially
attacked in America. One can accomplish a great deal if one
allows people to be approached in this matter by the
pronouncements of the dead.

I
wanted to discuss this matter quickly with you in a few words
because I had talked about these things recently and because
the example cited seems to be an especially good one. For how
will the world be informed about this? The world will learn
that a renowned scientist has confessed his allegiance to
spiritism. Then, people will read the book, and most likely —
we see this from our example — they will think that the case
for spiritism has never been made so convincingly as in this
book. As I said, I am speaking in this supplement to our
lecture with qualifications because I reserve the right to come
back to the matter after I have read the book myself. We are
probably confronted here with an attempt by the so-called
brotherhood of the left wing to attain special things by these
very means. This may not be clear at first blush, but it is
well known that there are numerous brotherhoods who wish to
attain their special purposes in this fashion, and more is
attained in this way than people are accustomed to believe. We
will talk about these things some more later on.